'Our gratitude to Canada is everlasting:' Dutch-Canadian war bride recalls liberation of Netherlands 70 years ago

A display featuring photos of Dutch war brides is shown at the Military Museums in Calgary, Alta., on VE Day, Friday, May 8, 2015. A pair of galleries relating to the Second World War in Holland were shown to the media three days after they opened, coinciding with the 70th anniversary of the German surrender in the war. Lyle Aspinall/Calgary Sun/Postmedia Network

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Dutch war bride Aleyda Campbell recalled the sacrifices of Canadian soldiers Friday, 70 years after they liberated her homeland and ended the war in Europe.

And though she said her husband was blown off his dispatch motorbike by a German shell, she noted another price he paid lingered long after the war.

“You hear about post traumatic stress disorder with younger soldiers, but the Second World War soldiers suffered from it, too,” said Campbell, 91, who married Canadian Pvt. Colin Campbell six months after the war ended.

“He had horrible nightmares, he’d wake up screaming.”

Campbell met her husband-to-be in her living room in the Dutch town of Oss after Canadian troops followed up the British Coldstream Guards who’d liberated her town in the autumn of 1944.

Her husband then went on to fight the Germans to free the rest of her country that had suffered severely from Nazi occupation.

“My God, we were so glad to see them, so relieved it was going to end,” said Campbell, whose male relatives hid from German forced labour roundups.

“It was a time of hunger and cold and stark naked fear.”

Five things you should know about Canada’s liberation of the Netherlands

1. More than 7,600 Canadian soldiers died in the fighting.

2. A favourite weapon used by the Canadians to swiftly end German resistance was the flamethrower.